The Anna Papers

by Ellen Gilchrist

  “Maybe I will tell her then.” Olivia stopped twisting her hands. Mary Lily heaved a sigh and speeded up. Olivia went on. “She is my sister. Maybe I will write to her. If he doesn’t like me enough to even meet me, why should I care what he thinks about anything?” Mary Lily shook her head. They turned a wide curve, then down a series of sharp curves and into a valley. Beautiful black fences stretched out on both sides of the road. They passed barns that matched the fences, then a pasture with roan and dark red horses. One very new colt stood beside his mother. Mary Lily slowed the car. “That’s Baron Fork Ranch,” Olivia said. “I worked there one summer, helping with the horses. Mr. Spears owns it. Oh, that colt is so sweet. What a sweet colt.”

  “I can ride,” Anna said. “And your father loves to ride. When you come to see us, you can ride the old horses we grew up on. I guess they’ll be pretty tame after Indian ponies.”

  “She had a buckskin last year,” Mary Lily said. “He was a good horse.”

  “He died in the winter,” Olivia said. “He foundered. We had boots on him for six months but he couldn’t get well. He hated them so he died. I haven’t had the time to get another horse. I was too busy with school.” Mary Lily started to say something, then stopped herself. They went on past the brown fences of the horse farm and beside a pasture where white egrets were scattered like fluffs of cotton on the green grass. A sign advertised float trips on the Illinois River. Another warned of speeding and drunk-driving fines. They went down another series of steeply banked curves. Mary Lily drove the old Pontiac at top speed down the curves, then turned onto a gravel road.

  “We only live two more miles,” Olivia said. “We live this side of town.” The road ended in a clearing with a small house surrounded by trees. Smoke was coming from a chimney and a man and a woman came to the door and walked down the steps and stood waiting, hand in hand.

  Mary Lily parked the car beneath a tree and they got out and Anna was introduced to Olivia’s grandparents. Their names were Little Sun and Crow Wagoner and Olivia told Anna later that they were seventy-two years old. Their surviving children were scattered now around Arkansas and Texas and Oklahoma. Only Mary Lily and one son were left in Tahlequah. The grandmother showed Anna around the rooms of the house. Then Olivia took Anna to her own room and put her suitcase very carefully down on a blue wicker bench beside her bed.

  “This is a bench Aunt Lily ordered from Dallas, Texas,” she said. “It had a dressing table with it but I don’t have room for it now. Because I have to have my desk. It’s made of mahogany. My grandfather made it himself. Do you like it?” She stood beside her desk. It was very neat, the books stacked neatly in a pile. Anna’s books were above the desk on a shelf.

  “I bought them one at a time with my own money,” Olivia said. “Are you like that, Aunt Anna? Like the people in those books?”

  “I used to be. But not anymore. I don’t know what I’m like now, Olivia. It has been a strange year for me.” She watched the girl’s face. “I am sad now, for the first time in my life. Perhaps people my age become sad, maybe that’s what all those metaphors about falling leaves mean, fall and winter and so forth. Anyway, I don’t want to give in to things like that, or …” Anna paused. “Perhaps from now on I have to borrow life from younger people. Could I borrow some from you?” Anna was sitting on the bed. Olivia sat down beside her and took her hand.

  “You can have anything you want from me. I’m still happy. I know a lot of people who aren’t happy, who think everything is going to go wrong, but I’m not that way. I think I’ll always win at things. I mean, I have a winning nature, like girls you write about. Like Kathy, that girl in those stories who won’t let anything get her down. I like her the best of everyone you write about.”

  “So do I,” Anna said. The girl’s hand was strong and brown upon her own and she thought of how she had held her grandmother’s hand, how the fine old skin and sharp knuckles had seemed to print her grandmother on her hand.

  “I couldn’t make your father come with me,” Anna said. “You must not be harmed by that, Olivia. It isn’t only Jessie. Something is stopping him from knowing you, some old sadness or memory of your mother or memory of when he was young and wild. I don’t understand it. He’s a wonderful man and someday you’ll know him. For now, I guess you have to be content with me.” Olivia looked down, then shook her head as if she had no answer to that. Anna slipped off her shoes and jacket and curled up on the bed. She was so tired, she was overcome with tiredness. If I get some sleep I’ll know what to say, she thought. I will know the best thing to say. “Shall I cover you up,” Olivia asked, “so you’ll be warm?”

  “That would be nice,” Anna answered. “That would be lovely.” The child pulled the cover over Anna’s legs, then bent down and took Anna’s shoes and lined them up beside the bedside table. Nothing Olivia had expected to happen had happened. Almost nothing at all had happened.

  Anna slept for many hours without moving. Without moving her hand from underneath the pillow, she slept away the days that had led her there. For a long time Olivia sat on the rug and watched her sleep. Then she got up very quietly and went out into the living room.

  “Your aunt does not look well,” her grandfather said. “She is pale. Has she been sick?”

  “She doesn’t like to fly on planes,” Olivia answered. “She hates to fly. It makes her tired. She may sleep a long time so don’t make any noise.”

  In the kitchen Mary Lily bent over the pot of soup she was cooking. She was counting to herself as she chopped and sliced the onions and tomatoes and peppers. She had a habit of counting when there were things that bothered her that she could do nothing about. The aunt was here. It was the beginning. The man would come to get Olivia. She sliced a carrot. Stopped counting. Brightened up. Perhaps he would take her too, take her away from work and paying bills. Yes, Mary Lily thought, he cannot have the girl without us too. All of us. He must take us all.

  It was dark when Anna woke. She sat up in the little bed and looked around the room. Anna felt tender toward the room, disarmed and tender. She stretched her arms and legs until the stiffness left them, then got up and washed her face and hands in the bowl Olivia had left for her on a table. She put on a clean blouse and went out to join the others.

  They ate dinner at a table beside the kitchen. Anna answered the grandparents’ questions and listened to their talk about the weather and the food. Every now and then she would look at Olivia and they would smile at each other. It was all very tentative and strange. Mary Lily served the soup. Then the phone rang. The grandfather answered it and handed it to Anna. It was Philip calling from New York.

  “How did you know where I was?”

  “You left it with the service. What are you doing, Anna? Where are you?”

  “I’m not really sure. No, I’m in Oklahoma, visiting my niece, the one I told you about. She’s wonderful, by the way.” Anna smiled at Olivia. “She looks like me.”

  “When are you getting home?”

  “I don’t know. Tomorrow maybe, or Monday. I’m not sure.”

  “Call me when you get back. I want to talk to you.”

  “All right. I almost called you from Atlanta. I don’t know why. I just wanted to talk to you, to tell you what I was doing. Anyway, I’m glad you found me.” She said goodbye and handed the phone back to the grandfather. “That’s the man I am in love with,” she told Olivia. “I don’t know why he called me here. He never calls me up.”

  “She doesn’t like them calling her,” Mary Lily said. “She won’t talk to them half the time.”

  “Who?” Olivia said. “Who are you talking about?”

  “The boys that call. The ones that call you up. Like the Tree boy that rides for Spears and them.”

  “That’s crazy,” Olivia said. “Why did you say that? No one calls me up.” She turned to Anna. “There isn’t anyone around here I’d have anything to do with.”

  Mary Lily got up and went to the stove and began stirring th
e soup. “I could give you more if you want it,” she said to Anna. “Yours is getting low.”

  “Thank you,” Anna said. “I’d like some more. It’s very good.”

  “It’s venison,” the grandfather said. “It’s good for you. Better than beef. It’s good meat.”

  “It’s wonderful,” Anna said. “It’s the best soup I’ve ever tasted.” Mary Lily took Anna’s bowl and filled it and handed it back to her and Anna thanked her and took up her spoon and drank the soup.

  In the morning they had corncakes for breakfast. With blackberry preserves and thin weak midwestern coffee.

  “We could go riding,” Olivia said. “I know a guy that’s got horses we can borrow.”

  “I’d like that,” Anna said. “If you’ll lend me some clothes. Or anything to cover my legs.”

  “You can wear my boots,” Mary Lily said. “If they will fit you.”

  “We’ll find you something to wear.” Olivia laughed. “Imagine my famous aunt wearing my clothes.” She led the way to her room and Anna began to try on boots. Olivia’s were too small and Mary Lily’s too wide but the grandmother’s fit nicely. Anna tucked a pair of blue jeans into the tops of the boots and pulled a white shirt over her head and stood before them for inspection. The boots were very old and beautiful, of handmade leather with thick heels. The grandmother stood in the doorway, smiling because her boots were of use. “Thank you,” Anna said and met the woman’s eyes, seeing darkness there and light and things she had no words for. Then, suddenly, seeing Summer Deer, standing in a doorway of the Hands’ dining room, with that look upon her face.

  They borrowed Mary Lily’s car and Olivia drove them out of the yard and back down the road to the highway. She drove like her aunt Mary Lily, at top speed with a sort of cheerful abandon. Anna reached for the seat belt, which was broken.

  “How’d you get to be such a good driver?” Anna said. “You couldn’t have been driving long, but I guess things are different in Oklahoma.”

  “I’ve had a permit for two years, because we live on a farm. They’ve always let me drive. They let me do anything.”

  “I noticed that. Why do you think that is?”

  “Because I’m the last one. Because my momma is dead. Because Aunt Mary Lily is fat and doesn’t have any men to love. Besides, I make good grades. They think I’ll do good and get a good job. My uncle’s kids are always in trouble. They don’t even go to school half the time.”

  “Do you want me to meet them while I’m here? The rest of your family?”

  “No.” Olivia was silent then and Anna kept her own silence and they drove along the curving two-lane highway in the early morning stillness. After a while they crossed a fork of the Illinois River and turned down a side road and into a gate with a sign that said, RODEO INTERNATIONAL. THE CHEROKEE RODEO, OPEN SEPTEMBER 5 TO NOVEMBER 20. SEE US RIDE.

  Two men were beside a stable worrying over the hoof of a pony. Olivia stopped the car and spoke to them.

  “Kayo’s in the office,” they said. “Go on in.”

  “We want to borrow some horses. You think he’s got time to fool with it this morning?”

  “He’s always got time for you.” The men smiled. A third man appeared, a tall man with huge broad shoulders. He came out of the door of a trailer beside the stables. He walked to the car and opened the door for Olivia and then for Anna.

  She’s using him, Anna thought. She’s using her stuff to get this guy to do her favors. That’s wild, how would I tell Daniel about this. Is she fucking him? She’s just sixteen. She wouldn’t be fucking yet. Still, who knows, they could be doing anything now.

  Kayo took them back to the stables and Olivia chose the horses she wanted.

  “What have you been doing?” Kayo said. “You haven’t been around in a while.”

  “Nothing,” Olivia said. “I’ve been busy at school.”

  “You still seeing Bobby Tree?” She blushed and he went on, turning to Anna. “She’s got the hotshot rodeo star around here in love with her. Kid went all the way to the finals in the National High School Rodeo last year.”

  “I’m not seeing him,” Olivia said. “I don’t see anybody.”

  “Not what I hear.” He laughed out loud and stuck his fingers into the pockets of his tight denim pants. A boy appeared, leading the saddled horses, a black-and-white mare and a palomino. Olivia pulled herself up on the palomino’s back and lifted her shoulders and the horse was still. She didn’t even use the reins, Anna thought. My God, this kid will eat Jessie for lunch. What am I doing? What have I done?

  Kayo offered her a leg up and she accepted it and lifted herself onto the mare and they began to ride, down a path leading from the rodeo grounds and across a pasture and into the woods behind it, following a path that was barely wide enough for the horses. Olivia led the way. I bet she could ride that goddamn horse without touching the reins, Anna thought. God knows who this girl is or what she is capable of, but who gives a damn, she’s part of us, she’s part of me and I like her and am excited by her. And this is what happens next.

  They rode for several hours, along paths which wound down between trees and along a sluggish brown stream that was a tributary of the Illinois River. Now Olivia was quiet. Now she did not look like Anna or Daniel or Jessie or anyone in North Carolina. She had entered an ancient reverie. She stopped several times and led Anna’s horse by the bridle, around parts of the path where the horses had to tread carefully. Once she stopped by the stream bed and dismounted and allowed her horse to drink. She helped Anna down and watered Anna’s horse. And all this time they said very little to each other. There seemed to be nothing that needed to be said.

  The path led uphill finally and back to the pasture and Olivia picked up the pace and they trotted the horses back to the barns. They dismounted and talked awhile with the grooms and then got into the car and were quiet again. This is how it’s supposed to be between people, Anna decided. And if I don’t start chattering or asking questions she won’t have to either.

  They drove back to the house. The sky was overcast now, a front was moving in, bright blue along the edges with shades of gray pushing against the blue.

  The road wound down between hardwood trees and tall scraggly pines. Huge black aeries adorned the bent tops of the pines. Crows the size of shoeboxes flew from tree to tree, calling their raucous calls, announcing the approaching storm. Olivia drove with one hand. The other hand was draped across the back of Anna’s seat. Anna watched the movements of her fingers on the wheel, the lift of her chin, the long bones of her legs. And watching Olivia she began to desire Philip, terrible desire, ancient desire. Outside the windows the crows flew from tree to tree.

  That night, when Anna was in bed, Olivia came in to tell her goodnight. The rain that had been promised was falling now, beating upon the roof and the windows of the house.

  “Turn off the light,” Anna said. “And sit beside me in the dark.” Olivia turned off the lamp and Anna reached for her hand. “So you don’t care anything about this boy who likes you? This famous Bobby Tree they keep talking about?”

  “I like him all right. I just don’t want to marry him. If you go with someone all the time around here you end up marrying them.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I don’t know. It always happens, though. I see it happen.”

  “So why don’t you want to marry him?”

  “Because his folks live in a trailer park. I can’t even stand to go over there to say hello. No matter how great he is. He still lives in that trailer park.”

  “What do you want, Olivia? For yourself.”

  “I want a good education and a job and a place of my own. My gym teacher took me up to Tulsa to visit this friend of hers who works for IBM. She has a new car and this really nice apartment and she can travel all the time. They send her everywhere.”

  Anna held the child’s hand, the child’s perfect hand lay in her own. What was there to say that would do no harm of any kind? “Whateve
r you do will be wonderful,” Anna said. “Even this Bobby Tree might be less dangerous than you imagine. All these people seem to think he’s pretty special.” She paused. “The world is very wide, Olivia. So much of it is good. One part is not more wonderful than another.”

  “I guess so,” Olivia answered. “But it seems like it. I bet North Carolina is better than this little hick town.”

  “You will come and see for yourself,” Anna said. “You have my promise about that.”

  The next day Olivia and Mary Lily drove Anna to the airport. While they were waiting for the plane Olivia excused herself to go to the ladies’ room and Anna was alone with Mary Lily.

  “Is there anything we can do for you?” Anna said. “Anything you need?”

  “We always need money. You can see, we live quite simply. Tell him to send money for her.” The woman looked down. “I did not want him to know about her. But since he does, I thought he would want to send us money. I make all the money alone. It’s not enough for the things we need.”

  “How much do you need?”

  “For three hundred more a month we could live in town. It would be easier for her there. She could go to the school she wants. I don’t want her on the school bus. They say things happen.”

  “Then I’ll see what I can do. I’ll send you money myself. But I can’t talk to him about it. He needs to see her first, to see that she is his.”

  “It is painful to her that he won’t see her. Well, if we had money the other thing would be all right.”

  “His business has been in trouble. The economy is in trouble and it’s hurting him. I’m sure it will be all right about college, though. Don’t let her worry about that.” Anna looked at her watch. She felt disloyal, split.

  “Tell him to see her.”

  “I tell him every chance I get, ever since I found out.” Olivia was walking toward them, was almost within earshot. “Of course you need more money,” Anna said. “I’ll tell him to steal some for you or go and dig some ditches. Look, I have to get on the plane now. I love you for taking such wonderful care of her. This visit means a great deal to me, more than you know.” She took Mary Lily’s hands but the woman would not meet her eye. “We are glad you came to see us,” she said, but Anna could barely hear the words. Then Olivia was there and the plane was ready to leave and they said their goodbyes and Anna boarded the plane and flew back to North Carolina.